While the allegations and counter-allegations over whether FBI officials met with Twitter on a regular basis to suppress stories on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal prior to the 2020 presidential election might not be worthy of a Tom Clancy spy novel, the conflicting accounts do make for a pretty good plot.
As reports broke that Twitter 1.0 officials did suppress the Biden scandal, the left-leaning social media company insisted that they only responded to FBI “requests,” allegedly based on beliefs that the laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation plot, vs. making suppression decisions internally.
Just one problem.
As I reported on December 8, FBI supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan during December 3 testimony disputed former Twitter executive Yoel Roth’s claims that the FBI warned the Big Tech company that Russia would likely release Hunter Biden’s emails before the 2020 election, potentially setting up a showdown over the social media company’s censorship of the explosive story. That showdown is on.
So the question again begs to be asked: Who’s lying? The former Twitter regime? The FBI? Or both?
Just one more problem.
John Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) under then-President Donald Trump, said on Sunday that no one in the U.S. intelligence community had the authorization to claim the Hunter Biden laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation plot.
In addition, Ratcliffe said there was only one reason a member of his office — or presumably, any official(s) from any U.S. intelligence agencies — would have met or even been in contact with Twitter in the run-up to the 2020 election.